E-AGORÀ 

E-Agorà sessions. All sessions are at 17.00-18.30 Central European Time (16.00 West European Time/UK; 18.00 East European Time)

 ***link

Tuesday the 16th of December 2025

 How can we visually share findings from our qualitative analyses? Using collaging, phenomenology and photographs to meaningfully interact with participants’ creative self-representations. 

Will Day, School of Psychology, Aston University, Birmingham, UK ***link

Photovoice is a common visual research methodology used in health research. In studies that combine photovoice with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, images often only serve to illustrate the analysis of the interview data, despite being powerful illustrations of participants capturing their altered ways of being-in-the-world. As researchers, how can we engage more meaningfully with participants' self-representations?

In this talk I will explore the analysis of visual materials created by participants - treating their photographs as interpretable data, separate from their interview data. Further innovations are present in the communication of qualitative findings. In a continued commitment to the visual, analytical findings are shown through phenomenological-informed collages of participants’ photographs to visually illustrate experiential features. These novel approaches are demonstrated through an exploration of how participants employ photographs to depict their day-to-day experiences of living with 'unseen' chronic health conditions whilst navigating the UK’s health-based welfare systems. 

While delving into the differing ways of understanding made possible through creative methods, I argue that visual displays of analyses offer new avenues for demonstrating and creating impact in qualitative research.

Tuesday the 17th of March 2026

 Exploring Affective Argumentation in Populist Political Discourses

 Helenor Tormis, University of Helsinki, Finland  ***link

Emotions and affects play a pivotal role in understanding social and political psychological phenomena, such as populism. When understood as an intergroup division between 'us', the ordinary people, and 'them', the corrupt elite or 'others', such as immigrants or minorities, populism is often fuelled by emotions including anger, fear, and resentment among both populist actors and voters. However, previous research has often overlooked the contextual, relational, and functional nature of affect within populism by approaching emotions as neat categories or as people's inner psychological states. Drawing on interviews with voters from a radical right populist party and other established parties, this talk demonstrates how affect is intertwined with everyday political thinking. Building on Wetherell's (2012) affective practice theory and Billig's (1987, 1999) rhetorical psychology, I introduce the concept of 'affective argumentation' to illustrate the intricate interplay between affect, argumentation, and political attitudes in practice. This framework enables an explicit analysis of affect in political discourse and offers a lens to examine the moral, relational, and dilemmatic nuances of affect, moving beyond the mere identification of the discursive and rhetorical.

Helenor Tormis is a social psychologist and PhD candidate at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research focuses on the intersection of political and social psychology. She is interested in topics such as populism, political polarization, intergroup relations, identity, and affect/emotions and in employing critical and affective discursive approaches.